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with the problem before we release them.”
    “Whom do they go to? Their families have disowned them. Their names have essentially been eliminated from the registers. They’ve had no contact with society.”
    “But if we have the disease stopped and it doesn’t get any worse, maybe their families will reconsider. I’m talking about the lowest-risk patients. Treated as outpatients. Besides, it is our duty to educate the public.”
    The quiet crashes back into the room; the electric fans blow it around, dispersing it all over and back again.
    “What do the others in this room think about this?” asks Minister Tsujino.
    There is no response; the rotating of the fans click, click. A few of the men pat the gathering sweat on their faces, let out stifled sighs, pat the backs of their necks, sweat impeding their white collars.
    “How about a show of hands for all of those in favor of releasing patients back into the public?”
    Although, because of the smoke, it is difficult to see the people farthest from him, Minister Tsujino knows he doesn’t have to see, for not a hand is lifted from the wood of the oval table.
    ARTIFACT Numbers 0147 and 0272
A red stone with a black swath running
through it; a worn one-yen coin.
    From the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, she stares at the bleeding wound of the morning horizon.
The tide backtracks, leaving only small puddles in the crevices of the rocks she sits on.
    She knows of twenty-three patients who struck these rocks, their final breaths taken on them. What was the last thing that they saw? Was it something of beauty? Like the white heron she sees pinkened by sunrise, perched one-legged, checking from the corner of its eye a fish leaping a foot out of the water. Or did they close their eyes, nothing left for them to see? Was it on a moonless night, sneaking away from their room, feeling their way up the dirt path, past the bamboo, and finally that thin, crooked cedar that stands atop the cliff, on a moonless night when nothing could be seen, eyes open or not? How many more—than the twenty-three that she knows of—in those seventeen years before she arrived?
    She helped to remove many of them from these rocks. Helped carry their bodies along the rough shore, over to the area past the farmers of Nagashima, who removed their hats, rested their hoes and rakes, past the fishermen of Nagashima, the nets bunched at their feet. The bodies were angled into a wheelbarrow and were taken on their final journey to the crematorium.
    This morning, she is not here to take away any bodies, only here because she likes the place. This place of death makes her feel so strangely alive. A place to get away, to be alone, and that is very difficult on this island, for her, and even more so for the patients who are wheelchair-bound, blind.
    Tucked among the shallow gorges of the rocks, she sees the west coast of Shodo Island, where, a little bit around the corner, in a few short hours, the divers will begin diving. Sometimes, but not as often now, she imagines that she can feel the energy from the divers cutting through the seven miles of the Inland Sea. Like that hot
tsunami
coming from Hiroshima that she felt in August— the August in this country that will never need a year to accompany it.
    The sun has trudged its way atop the hill at the eastern edge of the island; a fishing trawler heads home while the large temple bell of Nagashima gongs out the hour. Slow. Slow. Slow. Slow. Slow. Slow.
    Several early mornings this week, the rocks have bared, then sunned themselves, building a path to a tiny island across from Nagashima. A large cement
torii
gate stands at the front. Ever since arriving here, she has thought of crossing the one hundred yards to the island. She has stopped, each time wondering if it would be considered an attempt at escape. How could it be? The island is surrounded by the Inland Sea, no land, other than Nagashima, within a mile of it. But the rules are not hers to make or